As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Some information handling systems are implemented as multiple processing components configured as part of a single system. A “blade” is a general term often used to refer to one component in a system that is designed to accept some number of components. Blades can be, for example, individual servers that plug into a single cabinet or chassis or individual port cards that add connectivity to a switch. Blades are often hot swappable hardware devices. A “blade server” is a general term often used to refer to system architecture those houses multiple server modules or blades in a single chassis. Blade servers are widely used, for example, in data centers to save space and improve system management. Either self-standing or rack mounted, the chassis provides the power supply, and each blade often may have its own CPU, memory and hard disk. Redundant power supplies may also be provided. Blade servers generally provide their own management systems and may include a network or storage switch or other components. With enterprise-class blade servers, disk storage is often external, and the blades are diskless. This approach allows for more efficient fail-over techniques because applications are not tied to specific hardware and a particular instance of the operating system. In such a solution, the blades are typically anonymous and interchangeable.
In the modular server market, there are a variety of blade types that service various market segments including small general purpose, double high, double wide and quad blades (which are double high and double wide). These various blade types may occupy one or more slots in a chassis. The actual number of blades in a chassis is dependent upon the type of blades. Also, the different blade types can be inserted in any combination in the modular server chassis, for example, a 2×8 (double high and eight wide) slot chassis. In the prior art, the blade hardware typically only relays to the chassis controller blade presence and power state. The chassis controller displays the inventory and blade slot population status based on this signal alone. Any time the blade power of the chassis is generally powered OFF, in this case meaning that the blades are not powered but that the chassis controller board may still be powered for other chassis controller functionality, the chassis controller has no method to determine the type of the blade. The chassis controller then reports each consumed slot as a separate independent entity, even for multi-slot blades which have a primary/master slot in which all control is achieved and one or more secondary/slave slots. This erroneous information causes incorrect inventory and a lack of ability to communicate with the hypothetical blades. This problem can only be corrected by turning the chassis blade power fully ON. This creates customer dissatisfaction because blade type recognition and configuration is dependent on the chassis blade power state, which consumes excess power and generates excess heat.